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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

A Box of Saints

Of course, our favorite thing to do is to patron saint match. What better way to tackle the week then the perfect confirmation name!Hi Sister, I'm writing on behalf of my 13 year old daughter who will be receiving the sacrament of Confirmation next fall. At this point in her preparation she is tasked with choosing a patron saint. We've discussed it a bit and have (half) jokingly decided that she would like a somewhat obscure saint - someone who isn't so popular that he or she might be "overworked" with prayer requests and miracles ;) However, she will have to write a report on her chosen saint in the upcoming months, and we've noticed that we really don't know very much about some saints. Can you make some recommendations? My daughter will be starting high school next year at an all-girls catholic school. She enjoys watersports, shooting sporting clays, singing and acting. Her favorite subjects in school are science and social studies - and she loves bugs!It will be easy to find the perfect patron saint pile from which she can choose a name. The issue is going to be writing a report about that saint. Obscure saints are obscure for a reason: no one knows diddly beans about them. Some saints have only a rough guess at the years they did their saintly deeds upon the earth. Some have a shakey story about miraculous works. Some are just, well, legends.

Meanwhile, for her sports and shooting, we have St. Sebastian, who is not at all obscure. He, along with St. Bartholomew, who was skinned, have the grade school boys favorite holy cards. St. Sebastian is the patron saint of archers (which is the closest we can come to skeet shooting), athletes and anything that comes to a point, like pins.

You'll have to pick one. I suppose there is no law that says you can't have more than one, but...who does that? Especially with so many already hyphenated names out there. Still, she has two things to consider. One, does this saints resonate with me. Two, can't I get a whole essay out of this guy.

7 comments:

If the essay has the right prompt, you can get a report out of anything. I had to write a paper on the biography of my saint, and how canonization worked. My saint (St. Sophie of Rome) is an obscure saint, so she got two paragraphs. The rest of my five pages was excruciating detail about the canonization process!

St. Hildegard of Bingen. Composer, writer of a morality play, books on the natural sciences, mystic, abbess, Doctor of the Church.Alternative: Look up the saints for the day of a significant life event. When my father was being buried, my brother mentioned that his son would have his confirmation in a few years. The priest suggested St. Martin of Tours, that day's main saint. That was the saint my nephew chose.

Dear Sister, What a thrill to log on and see your response to my request. Thank you! You have certainly given my daughter some great Saints to consider - and your readers did too. Funny, when I was confirmed I chose the name James as it was my grandfather's name. However, during the ceremony, the Bishop just couldn't get his head around the idea that a girl would choose a male name. I remember the back and forth I had with him, in front of the whole congregation. He asked me what name I had chosen and I answered "James"."Aah, Jane" he answered. "No, James""Yes, Jane it shall be"I was confirmed Jane - but I still consider James to be my patron Saint.